Morgan's Journal
by zarqa
Summary: Morgan has an assignment to keep a journal. Here it is.
1. Chapter 1

I got this assignment to try to keep a journal. So here I am trying to keep one. We'll see how it goes. Miss Ross said it doesn't have to be anything fancy. And I should write it for me only, not for anyone else to read. Although she is going to read it I guess. Aren't you Miss Ross? Just kidding. LOL.

Not much going on lately. Just karate practice and the school play. Baseball's over for the year.

Michael watches football every now and then but it doesn't really hold my interest. I don't know why. I guess I don't like the guys hiding themselves under the helmets and padding. If you're going to play a game, you should show your face, it's the least you can do. I don't like that crunch sound when the players charge at each other either. It sounds like it hurts and why would anyone want to hear someone else's pain, even when they're just playing a game.

Baseball, now there's a game. I've got this book where I keep track of all the players' stats. I guess it was sort of my journal before I started this one. I keep track of all the teams but my favorite, of course, is the Yankees. My dad's taken me to games before, although not lately.

My dad is a coffee importer. He recently hired this new guy, Dominic, and he loves baseball too. This guy and I didn't exactly start off as best friends. Long story short, he held a gun on me and my mom and brother. But he ended up being all right. I can talk to him about the Yankees and pretty much anything else. He's cool about taking care of me. That's his job, but he really seems to do it better than anyone else has before. My half-sister Kristina goes out with this creep, Kiefer, and Dominic scared the living shit out of him once when he was picking on me. (Oops, sorry Miss Ross, for the swearing!) Anyway I really like hanging out with him and I like that he seems to like hanging out with me, even though it's just his job. Oh, I almost forgot. He saved my life once.

It's been great having Michael back home with us. He was sick for a really long time and I missed him a lot. We used to play video games all the time back before he got sick. Now, not so much. It's still good to have him back though. I kind of wish he would smile more though. He doesn't smile or laugh or have as much fun as he used to. Most of the time he kind of ignores me and doesn't want to be around anyone but our dad.

I don't know, ever since he woke up, Michael has this look about him. Like this scowl and meanness. There's a kid in class. To protect the innocent, let's just call him Clancy. One day at recess he found a bird's nest. Just broken eggshells and bits of feather in it. There was a bird near the nest and it was crying. Just chirping away and it sounded like a cry. There weren't any baby birds near the nest so we figured that either they had up and flown away already or else they'd been eaten by some predator. So this bird was just standing on one of the branches, crying and crying.

This kid Clancy went up to the tree and picked up the bird. It wasn't a very high tree so he could reach up to the branch, no problem. We all thought he was going to try to comfort it or take care of it somehow. Maybe take it back to class and we could all feed it or something. He did pet the bird for a while and said things like "There there, it'll be all right." But then, out of the blue, he got this mean expression on his face, and he held up the bird and snapped its neck. Just like that. Snap, was the sound it made. And he just stood holding the dying bird. The head hung limp at a weird angle away from the bird's body and twitched for a while and Clancy just watched it twitch. Tiny drops of blood came out of its beak. And then the head went still and the little heart inside the body stopped beating. Clancy just stared at it like it was the most fascinating thing. The rest of us were all like, "Ewww! Dude, what the hell, put it down. Let's go!" He held it for a while longer then threw it down on the ground. And we all ran over to the stupid swing set and started playing there.

We never talked about the bird. I think if we had talked about it, something tells me that Clancy would have just said he was doing the bird a favor, putting it out of its misery, and left it at that.

That snapping sound was pretty gross and I remember it to this day and it makes me a little sick even thinking about it. But, if Clancy even remembered the sound, which I doubt he even did, I don't think it made him very sick at all. After that day he started walking around with a scowl and a meanness to him. Kind of like Michael's. I don't think whatever Michael did that gave him his scowl, I don't think it makes him sick at all either.

I guess that's a lot for one day's entry into this thing. I've got to go anyway. We're all getting ready soon to go to my baby sister's baptism. All our family and friends will be there to welcome baby Jocelyn into the church and into the world.


	2. Chapter 2

Michael got to the shower before I did, so I've got a few minutes to keep writing before getting ready for Jocelyn's ceremony.

Hate to admit it, but I'm kind of liking writing in this thing. It feels like talking to a friend. There are plenty of kids in school who I consider friends. These are kids I hang out with all the time in school, but, for some reason, things get weird anytime I mention my family, especially my dad. It's like the other kids are afraid to even mention his name.

One time, Billy from class wanted to come over after school to my dad's house so we could both go out to the part of his property that's near the water and look at the frogs jumping around in the reeds. His mom and dad came to pick him up and when he asked them if he could go to my dad's house, they got this shocked and scared look on their faces and they didn't know what to say. They made up something about him having to visit his grandparents. Then they all drove away. He didn't come over that day or any other day. So, yeah, I can hang out with kids when we're in school, but no one ever wants to come over and play at either my mom's house or my dad's house.

I really like hanging out with my cousin, Molly. She's like two years younger than me but has already read every book I've read and then some. She's super smart and funny. We even had an adventure together once when we rescued this guy Johnny, one of my dad's employees. So I have her to talk to I guess, because she has some of the same family drama I do.

And there's Dominic. It's funny, he's not family and we haven't been friends that long but, when he comes around, I feel like I've known him forever. I guess some people just have the knack of making you feel loved and accepted no matter what. Like family, but better because you can choose whether to be around them or not.

Okay, so, maybe I can list who's coming to the baptism? Well, there's my mom, Jax and Michael, of course. And then my dad and Kristina and my cousin, Molly, and their mom, Alexis. My mom kind of hates her, but she's my step-dad's friend so she'll probably come. I think mom's friend Olivia is also going to be there. Maybe her boyfriend, Johnny, but I'm not too sure. I'm not sure if Grandma Bobby is back from Seattle yet, but I know for sure that Grandpa Mike will be there. Lulu, my mom's cousin, is going to be Jocelyn's godmother. And Jocelyn and I are going to share a godfather, which is Jason. He's my mom's best friend and my namesake.

Dominic is coming too, which reminds me: I should bring a deck of cards so that during the slow parts of the ceremony, he can show me some more poker tricks. He started teaching me poker the last time we hung out. Whenever I've tried to play with my mom or Michael they always kill me because I can never tell when they're bluffing. And they bluff A LOT! I can't tell lies worth crap. Lying about stuff just makes me feel weird, I guess. Dominic's teaching me how to play the game without feeling like I'm cheating. He says there are ways to play the game well without feeling like you're a creep. Besides, he says, lying is a part of the game. He says there's two ways to win at poker: have a good hand or make the other players think you have a good hand. If you think of it as just a game where you're not really hurting anyone, you're just taking away their money before they take away your money, it makes it easier to lie, he says. He says most people break even at the end anyway, so it's no big deal.

He says no one ever got rich off of a night of poker, and if they did they didn't stay that way for long. He says even the high rollers in poker, even the people who play poker for a living, don't always win, and most of the time they lose. He says for some people that first taste of winning, of making a pile of cash in a couple minutes, from doing nothing more than being a really good liar, does something to their brains where they keep wanting to push it, make more and more, not even stopping when they're way deep in a hole. He says the only way to make money and be successful for real is to work hard.

I don't know how a guy like him ended up working for my dad. Most of the people who work for my dad are lug-heads who can't really do anything else. Dominic, though, not only is he pretty smart, but he really thinks about other people. As much as I love my dad and my step-dad and Jason and Michael, the person who I really admire the most these days is Dominic. He's not just words, you know? My dad tells me how much he loves me all the time. And we do fun stuff together. But most of the time he's so wrapped up in this work, that spending time with me isn't always a priority for him. Dominic seems to really like his work too. But I think he knows that the family you keep and the friends you make are, in the end, more important than the work you do. I really admire him and want to be like him one day.

Funny I may come back to this journal like ten years from now and read this and I will have become as great a guy as Dominic. Then I'll be all like, "I told you so!" LOL

Okay, Michael's finally out of the shower. Don't even ask me what I think he does in there for so long! LOL.


	3. Chapter 3

Well, we're all in the minivan on the way to Josie's party (that's my nickname for her. Cute, eh?). The traffic on Harborview Road is crazy. Josie's all dressed up looking like an angel asleep in her car seat next to me. Mom is in the front seat looking across at Jax every five minutes, both of them with goofy smiles on their faces. They don't seem to be too worried about being late for the ceremony. In fact, Mom never worries about being late to anything. I think she thinks wherever she has to be and whatever she has to do can wait until she gets there. Jax is usually on time to stuff but he tends to get as oblivious as Mom when he's around her. I forgot to mention, the Quartermaine's will be at the christening too. They'll probably be the only ones upset by us being late. But they live on this crazy road too so they're probably not really on time either.

Michael is in the back seat glaring out the window looking like he's about to jam his fist into it any minute. I don't know what the hell his problem is, excuse my French. The other day he blew up at me for no reason. Some nonsense about how Dominic is only being nice to me because that's his job and he wants to kiss Dad's ass, excuse my French, again. It comes out of nowhere, like this explosion of hatred and meanness. Molly would say he lacks empathy, which, when I looked it up, means that he doesn't get that he's hurting people he's supposed to love. He lacks an internal editor, as Molly would say. She says you learn empathy from reading books and generally listening to other people's stories. The more stories you hear, the more viewpoints you're exposed to, the more empathy you build. It's the skill of being able to step into someone else's shoes. I like to think that kindness just happens naturally too, you don't need to read a book to achieve it. Mostly it's just about treating people like you would like to be treated. Everybody should have that idea in their head, right? Michael doesn't. Or he did and it disappeared after the accident. I don't really know about that either, because Jason had an accident too that changed him. I didn't know him before the accident, but it seems to me that who is now is more kind and more empathetic than anyone else I know. He puts up with my mom's drama on a regular basis. That takes a lot of fortitude (another word I picked up from Molly).

So I have no idea if it was the accident that changed Michael or if he was always this way. Whatever the case, I don't like it. It makes me so mad! When he said that crap about Dominic I got so mad I wanted to cry. Like I felt that sting in my eyes and I felt like I'd just been punched in the gut and he wouldn't stop, he kept going on about how I was just a dweeby kid, why would someone like Dominic be interested in hanging out with me unless he wanted something from Dad. I just wanted to wail at him, punch him, take him down, and make him stop being mean to me for no reason at all. I don't believe that about Dominic at all. That can't be right, can it? I consider myself a good judge of people and it doesn't seem to me that Dominic is faking it. He doesn't seem like the kind of guy who fakes anything.

Let's see, what else can I write about while traffic is at a standstill out there? The school play? I really liked singing with Molly at karaoke night (don't even ask how two kids ended up in a bar). Molly's mom really liked my voice that night and suggested I try out for the play at school. She said the experience of performing and acting like you're another person for a while really builds character and is a good outlet for your emotions. And she said it looks good on college applications too. She said it's never too early to start thinking about college applications. I'm not worried about college applications yet, but I did think it'd be fun to do something different. So I tried out and got the part! We're doing the musical _Twist_ this year and I got the part of the Artful Dodger. He's this kid criminal who's a pickpocket and is in a gang of pickpockets and betrays his friends.

I wonder if Dominic ever picked pockets when he was growing up. I mean a criminal has to start somewhere. Not that he's a criminal. He works for my dad, who is a coffee importer. It's just that Dominic seems so street-smart that he probably knew of kid criminals even if he wasn't one himself. I guess I could get some insight on what it's like to be someone who avoids responsibility and doesn't think about consequences from my mom. And I could get insight into what it's like to be a street-hardened kid from my dad. But I think Dominic may have a different twist on it (Pun! I made a pun! Twist, get it? LOL) I think Dominic grew up streetwise but still honorable somehow. He probably knew his way around the criminals but I don't see him being a person who could ever hurt anyone innocent. I think he's probably seen a lot of bad stuff, people being mean to each other, hurting each other, like my dad has, but seeing all of that hasn't made him hard and angry, like it's made my dad. I think he gets sad like my dad though. I've never seen Dominic sad but something tells me he may have that in common with my dad. I take that back, I have seen Dominic sad. But he doesn't really show it, you know? He's really good at making the people around him feel good and not bringing anyone down. But I've seen the sadness crop up in him sometimes. Maybe Dad sees that too and that's why he likes him? Anyway, maybe I'll run my lines by Dominic and he can tell me if I sound authentic in the role or not. Not that I really need to sound authentic for a middle school musical. I just like to do my best when I can, you know.


	4. Chapter 4

**A/N Just want to thank you all for reading and commenting. It means a lot and keeps me going! I'm keeping this "story" true to the events on the show. Writing here is sort of a warmup exercise for the chapters I submit to the other story I'm currently writing, _Dante's Skin_, which, if you've read it, is more of a stretch of the imagination. :) So eventhough the two stories aren't related in any obvious way, they seem to be feeding into each other in some way. Anyway, enough about my writing process. I'm just having a lot of fun getting inside Morgan's head and I hope you are too!**

So we managed to make it to the christening in time and it was a good ceremony as far as christenings go. Mom looked really pretty standing up at the altar and smiling at all the people she loves the most: Jax and Josie and Jason and Lulu. Everyone looked really nice. Michael was even nice for a change, but he got inexplicably irritated by the tree that Lady Jane brought as a gift for Josie. Have no idea what that was about. And he made some rude comment about Dominic again. I think he has a hard time relaxing and having fun. I know there are a lot of deep serious things to think about in life, but sometimes you gotta just be happy, just for the sake of being happy, you know?

Anyway, so, yeah, the ceremony went well, but for some reason Dad and Dominic never showed up. Some business thing probably came up and since Jason absolutely had to be at the ceremony, Dad must have needed Dominic's help. Don't really know what business thing would be important enough to miss Josie's christening, though. With Dominic helping my dad, I'm sure whatever business they had to deal with worked out fine. I know that my dad's work is important, but I'm still kind of mad at him for standing up my little sister on her special day. And I know Dominic would have wanted to be here too to see Lulu becoming Josie's godmother. I know Josie's not going to remember, but I will and Michael will and so will Mom, I bet.

I know you're supposed to respect your elders but I have to say my dad can be kind of selfish sometimes. I know he loves all of us a lot and I know he loves me especially a lot because I'm his only biological son. Don't get me wrong, he loves Michael a lot too and Michael is Dad's son in all the ways that count. But I can tell the way he looks at me sometimes, he's proud of the way I'm turning out, and kind of surprised by it too. Like he doesn't expect anyone who has his blood to be a decent kid.

I don't know, it seems to be there are two kinds of love. One kind is the kind that's shown to the world. Like the kind of love that's about stuff and food and a warm house. Dad provides all of that in spades. In fact, between Jax and my dad, I'm totally covered for video games for the rest of my life. I can have pretty much any material thing I want. The second kind of love is the kind that's about feelings. Wait; scratch that, maybe there are three kinds of love. Stuff, feelings spoken, and feelings felt. There's one about spoken feelings and then there's a love about feelings, well, that you just...feel. Dad tells me all the time how much he loves me. But then I go to his house and he asks me if I've grown a few inches since the last time I saw him. Granted I am going through a growth spurt, but a parent who's around their kid everyday wouldn't really notice a couple inches growth here and there would they? A parent who really knows their kid would just know their kid, like they know their own face. So my dad shows me he loves me and tells me he loves me but that love that comes from familiarity, from spending day to day with someone, that's not really there. At least I don't feel it all the time with him. I don't think things would be different even if I lived with him all the time. He has barriers up around him that keep that kind of love from reaching him.

I wonder if all of this has to do with him being so sad most of the time. Don't get me wrong, it's not like he walks around crying all the time. In fact I don't remember ever seeing him cry. (And that's something a kid remembers: when one of their parents cry.) Even when he smiles, though, I've noticed that persistent sadness there, like things are never quite right with him. Most of the time he's barking orders at Max or Milo or Bernie or Diane. Diane is pretty smart though and she can give as good as she gets. And, of course, my dad barks a lot at Jason. He tries not to let us hear him when he's like that but I've heard him a few times. There's this cold anger there. Solid like the face of a cliff that nothing can penetrate. I know his mind has somehow transformed the sadness he can't seem to do anything about into anger and a need to have control over everything all the time. But does barking orders and being cold really give you any real control? Does it earn you any real respect in the world? I don't know.

My dad always seems to think that everyone is after him. Even the people who love him and have shown him over and over again that they love him. According to my dad, even those people are capable of betrayal at the drop of a hat. He almost expects it. In fact, he has this tendency to treat people like they've already betrayed him. The whole cycle becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, as Molly would say.

Does sadness always lead to anger? I don't know. I don't think it always has to. There are lots of people who deal with sadness and loss and never get angry about it. It seems that anger is a really selfish response to being sad. It's like you want to hold on to the bad feelings and not allow anything good in. That makes you selfish, right? I think it makes my dad selfish.


	5. Chapter 5

Okay, now the shit has really hit the fan, pardon my French. (I think I'll be speaking a lot more French from now on.) Is there such a thing as teacher-student confidentiality? There should be because what I write here may get me into trouble. But I really have to write it, so I hope, if you're reading this Ms Ross, that you please try not to get me into trouble?

So Dad didn't show up to Josie's christening and he didn't show up at the party afterwards. And then we found out that he and Dominic had some sort of fight and Dad shot Dominic. I write those words down and I can hardly hold my hand straight to write. I'm all shaky and I feel like crying and shouting at somebody. Words just aren't enough to describe how mad and confused I am right now.

Dominic is fighting for his life in the hospital right now all because of my dad. Dominic, who saved my life, who saved Dad's life, who saved Lulu's life. Dominic, who was my friend for real. No matter what anyone says. He was my friend for real, wasn't he? He never tried to get information from me about Dad. We never talked about Dad at all. We had plenty of other stuff to talk about. Even if he wasn't my friend for real, even if he was just being nice to me to get to Dad, that still doesn't mean Dad had the right to gun him down. Does my Dad think he lives in a video game or something? That he can just gun people down willy-nilly, just to save his own butt. Dad is a thief and he's a murderer. Dominic was trying to stop him. He was trying to help him stop being a criminal. Dominic was trying to help Dad. And Dad shot him.

As if that wasn't enough. Get this. Dominic is not really Dominic. His real name is Dante Falconeri. He's Olivia's son and a cop.

And here's the real kicker. He's Dad's son too. He's my brother. ___________________________________________________________________________________

I wrote the above like two days ago and couldn't go on. A lot to take in. Left me kind of speechless, you know? And I don't know how much I can say without getting people into trouble.

Let's just say I've been thinking a lot about what lying means and when it's acceptable to lie and when it's not. It seems that no one can be one hundred percent truthful all the time. Perfect honesty, if it's at all possible, is not as important, it seems, as taking care of the people you love and who love you. Sometimes honesty takes second place to justice. I don't even know what that means fully, but something about it sounds right to me. That you have to lie to be fair? Does that sound right?


	6. Chapter 6

Without divulging any incriminating information, let me just say I now know why Michael has been acting so strange the past few months. It kind of made me want to puke when he told us. I felt sick for him and I felt so sad. And thinking about this mess is like staring at a brick wall. There is no easy way out; it's a total dead end. Most of the time when something crazy happens, there is one clear right path to take out of it. But in this case, there isn't. Most of the time you know what is the right thing to do. This time, I have no idea.

What's happening with Michael and my instinct to protect him is making me think about Dante again. How even when he was lying, he was behaving according to his instincts. He never let the lies change who he really was. And it was almost like we felt this bond, this brotherly thing, way before we knew it. Sometimes you feel things before you know them. I'm not saying its some psychic supernatural thing. It's more like trust and faith. Those are things you can never see or put a name to but, when you feel them, you feel them.

Anyway, this thing with Michael and my dad and the law, hate to say it, but if it wasn't so darn serious, it would be kind of fun. It's like solving a mystery or, actually, trying to keep other people from solving the mystery that you already know the answer to. Molly's a big help. It's like she doesn't even need to go to school anymore, she practically already has a law degree. She and I finally broke down and told Jason everything we know and he was pretty helpful too. It's like he's a drill sergeant rallying us troops to my dad's cause. Or a coach or something. I like that neither he nor Sam talk to us like we're kids. They totally make us feel like we're all on the same team. And they seem to be pretty smart about thinking of ways to get out of trouble. Molly said something smart and true, though, when she asked Jason if it wouldn't just be easier to tell the truth in the first place. "Isn't it way more trouble to break the law than to follow it," I think were her words. Good point, Molly! But Jason didn't have an answer to that. I guess once you've spent so much of your life figuring out ways to get out of trouble it's hard to backtrack and try to not get into trouble in the first place. So, yeah, Jason is a good coach. I know he'd bend over backwards to protect any of us. But there's a lot of stuff he just doesn't have the answers to.

You know who would have an answer to all of this, if I went to ask him? You totally know who I'm going to say, right? Dante. He'd know exactly the right thing to do. He'd probably tell us to go to the cops with what we know but I think he'd do it in a way that made everything work out for the best. I went to see him in the hospital the other day. I almost started crying when I saw how sick he looked, his face was all gray and he had trouble breathing and he kept grabbing his chest and wincing every now and then. It makes me fell gross to know how he got there, who did that to him. I felt so sick that I wanted to run and hug him as soon as I walked in the door and tell him I was sorry that our dad was who he was. But I didn't do that because I needed to know if him being friends with me was just a part of his cover. And, of course, like I already knew, deep inside me somewhere, he said it wasn't. He considers me and Kristina and Michael his family now. And I believe it. He's even helping out our dad. I don't really get completely why, but he is. Maybe it's because what happened between him and my dad is personal and not really a part of the job he set out to do? In some way, he thinks what happened to him was his own fault? Whatever the case, it's obvious he cares about us. All of us. Maybe I should go to him now? Maybe ask him in hypothetical terms what the right thing to do is?


End file.
